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From the article: > Retail stores also use sound and music to manipulate the environment. A study from the early 1980s showed that slow-tempo music led to shop

by nickjj 3y ago

From the article: > Retail stores also use sound and music to manipulate the environment. A study from the early 1980s showed that slow-tempo music led to shoppers moving more slowly through the store and spending more money than if fast-tempo music played. I wonder how big this sample size was. The linked study is locked behind a login. The public page indicates maybe it was only 52 stores and it was done by surveying the managers of the store. They even explicitly mention it was a "belief". Too bad the next few sentences are behind a login because it sounds like that would shed more context. One of the local grocery stores here will play a bunch of 80s hits. They play Eye of the Tiger regularly. That song is one of the most purpose driven songs ever. If you had a mission to pick up 7 items in your list you can be sure you'll be done in record time. I will say this though, I've absolutely stayed longer in a store because I wanted to wait until I heard a specific part of a song but that feeling is completely unrelated to buying things.

sillywalk 3y ago
> One of the local grocery stores here will play a bunch of 80s hits. They play Eye of the Tiger regularly. That song is one of the most purpose driven songs ever. If you had a mission to pick up 7 items in your list you can be sure you'll be done in record time. As somebody who likes to finish their grocery shopping quickly, I picture myself in a video montage with that song as the soundtrack. Sidenote: I felt old when I heard Gangsta's Paradise being played in a grocery store about 10 years ago.
- Smoosh 3y ago
  Been spending most our lives walking up and down in aisle 5
- koolba 3y ago
  > I felt old when I heard Gangsta's Paradise being played in a grocery store about 10 years ago. What store was it?
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    A Metro (or maybe it was still A&P) in London, Ontario.
- spc476 3y ago
  It won't be long until Nine Inch Nails starts playing at nursing homes.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    I want to bingo like an animal
  - dghughes 3y ago
    A bit apt. Toenails can be hard to get at when you're old.
  - xattt 3y ago
    Having worked in one in the past, I have been thinking about this a lot. The one that i was at, just before COVID, had a single computer for all the residents which was a little bizarre. The rest of environment and recreation programs will have to adapt. Aging millennials will probably demand things like game consoles, coffee drinks, meals like sushi and actual exercise equipment. Current nursing home setup are so incompatible with incoming generations, it will be a flurry of activity to adapt.
- defrost 3y ago
  I'd be surprised if I heard Lost in the Supermarket by The Clash.
matham 3y ago
What you're quoting is their literature review, not their study. Their study was: >... conducted in a medium-size store operated by a large, nationally known chain of supermarkets ... The study covered a nine-week period starting on January 28 and ending on March 31, 1980... ... M0=no music, M1=slow, M2=fast music... ...they measured (1) traffic speed (2) daily gross sales (3)... ...for (1) they found: traffic flow was significantly slower with the slow tempo music (Ml mean = 127.53 seconds) than for the faster tempo music (M2 mean = 108.93 seconds) ... Ml stimulated an even slower pace than no music (a mean of 127.53 seconds for Ml compared to a mean of 119.86 for Mo), although not statistically significant... ...for (2) they found: The higher sales volumes were consistently associated with the slower tempo musical selections while in contrast, the lower sales figures were consistently associated with the faster tempo music (MI mean = $16,740.23 compared with M2 mean = $12,112.85). This difference is significant...
- d1sxeyes 3y ago
  I don't have Jstor access so can't read the study, but does this consider the intended demographic of the supermarkets? Just some thoughts off the top of my head: I would imagine that clients with a higher median age in general prefer slower music. I would also imagine that clients with a higher median age in general are more affluent (or more likely to be shopping for more than one person). As a result, I would expect spend to be higher in areas with an older customer base. Managers with an older customer base would likely select music that appeals to their customer base, likely slower music. Shoppers who do not like the manager's music taste may opt to instead shop somewhere where the music is more in line with their own tastes, so I'm not sure that the independent variable here can be properly controlled. Therefore, the study may actually be finding a correlation which depends rather on the affluence of the community, rather than what they purport to have discovered.
  - matham 3y ago
    From the study: > It became imperative to develop an operational definition for the music variables slow tempo and fast tempo; that is, how slow is slow and how fast is fast? To answer this a sample was selected at random from the trading area of the supermarket. Subjects were chosen to reflect the age, sex and other relevant socioeconomic characteristics of the store's customers. Each subject was asked to listen to several instrumental musical arrangements and to classify them as slow, fast or somewhere in between. A total of 95% of the subjects classified musical selections with a tempo of 72 beats per minute or fewer as slow. Selections with a tempo of 94 beats per minute or more were classified as fast. Thus, the range from 73 to 94 beats per minute was considered between fast and slow, although this category was not directly a part of this study. Therefore, based on these findings, slow tempo music was defined as having a tempo of 72 beats per minute or fewer, an average of 60 and a standard deviation of 6. Fast tempo music was defined as having 94 beats per minute or more, an average of 108 and a standard deviation of 7. > However, perceptions of slow and fast may vary across geographic regions or demographic parameters and therefore, the reader must be cautioned against generalizing these findings too far beyond the scope of this study.
triceratops 3y ago
According to at least one store manager interviewed in Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, the employees at the store are responsible for selecting music because they're the ones who have to listen to it all day. There isn't a lot of deeper thought going into it.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  it's not quite that simple, because stores play music they have licensed. And of course during the holiday season the employees are subject to a lot of songs they most likely never want to hear again, like the prolific Mariah Carey and Wham songs.
  - JeremyNT 3y ago
    Yeah this depends a lot on the store. I know trader Joe's employees can pick the music, but they have a reputation as being employee friendly. When I worked at a low end grocery store we had no say at all and just got whatever they sent to us. We did however sometimes hijack the PA system after hours and play whatever we wanted over that.
- ambichook 3y ago
  that depends entirely on which store you're talking about. the store i used to work at, for example, would simply put the radio on, while a store next door was run like this
  - triceratops 3y ago
    > the store i used to work at, for example, would simply put the radio on Who selected the station?
    - ambichook 3y ago
      the owners
tetris11 3y ago
N=1, I've definitely tried to work in coffee shops during the christmas period that played the same obnoxious christmas songs on a loop to drive the customers out.
rr808 3y ago
I remember someone telling me this about McDonalds when I was a teenager. I went to a store and listened carefully, it was just local radio. Sounds like a myth.
- xp84 3y ago
  Radio is basically illegal to play in public due to licensing, so most chains would not want the liability. Not saying it doesn’t happen, just that that franchisee was playing chicken with a copyright infringement lawsuit.
baud147258 3y ago
> One of the local grocery stores here will play a bunch of 80s hits. I remember once where the local mall played Foule sentimentale by Alain Souchon, which has very anti consumerist lyrics... Made that grocery shopping trip quite ironic.
mock-possum 3y ago
It definitely falls into the category of “things I don’t believe work” or “things I don’t think work on me.” I’m not going to a mall to be hypnotized into sleepwalking my way from purchasing opportunity to purchasing opportunity - I’m there to get in, get the stuff I came for, and get out. No matter if they’re playing fast music, loud music, holiday music, kids music - I’m not there to listen to the music. It has no bearing on the choices I make or the actions I take. Very very hard for me to believe this stuff, it seems far too much like pseudoscientific magic to me.

by nickjj 3y ago

sillywalk 3y ago

> One of the local grocery stores here will play a bunch of 80s hits. They play Eye of the Tiger regularly. That song is one of the most purpose driven songs ever. If you had a mission to pick up 7 items in your list you can be sure you'll be done in record time. As somebody who likes to finish their grocery shopping quickly, I picture myself in a video montage with that song as the soundtrack. Sidenote: I felt old when I heard Gangsta's Paradise being played in a grocery store about 10 years ago.

Smoosh 3y ago
Been spending most our lives walking up and down in aisle 5
koolba 3y ago
> I felt old when I heard Gangsta's Paradise being played in a grocery store about 10 years ago. What store was it?
- sillywalk 3y ago
  A Metro (or maybe it was still A&P) in London, Ontario.
spc476 3y ago
It won't be long until Nine Inch Nails starts playing at nursing homes.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  I want to bingo like an animal
- dghughes 3y ago
  A bit apt. Toenails can be hard to get at when you're old.
- xattt 3y ago
  Having worked in one in the past, I have been thinking about this a lot. The one that i was at, just before COVID, had a single computer for all the residents which was a little bizarre. The rest of environment and recreation programs will have to adapt. Aging millennials will probably demand things like game consoles, coffee drinks, meals like sushi and actual exercise equipment. Current nursing home setup are so incompatible with incoming generations, it will be a flurry of activity to adapt.
defrost 3y ago
I'd be surprised if I heard Lost in the Supermarket by The Clash.

matham 3y ago

What you're quoting is their literature review, not their study. Their study was: >... conducted in a medium-size store operated by a large, nationally known chain of supermarkets ... The study covered a nine-week period starting on January 28 and ending on March 31, 1980... ... M0=no music, M1=slow, M2=fast music... ...they measured (1) traffic speed (2) daily gross sales (3)... ...for (1) they found: traffic flow was significantly slower with the slow tempo music (Ml mean = 127.53 seconds) than for the faster tempo music (M2 mean = 108.93 seconds) ... Ml stimulated an even slower pace than no music (a mean of 127.53 seconds for Ml compared to a mean of 119.86 for Mo), although not statistically significant... ...for (2) they found: The higher sales volumes were consistently associated with the slower tempo musical selections while in contrast, the lower sales figures were consistently associated with the faster tempo music (MI mean = $16,740.23 compared with M2 mean = $12,112.85). This difference is significant...

d1sxeyes 3y ago
I don't have Jstor access so can't read the study, but does this consider the intended demographic of the supermarkets? Just some thoughts off the top of my head: I would imagine that clients with a higher median age in general prefer slower music. I would also imagine that clients with a higher median age in general are more affluent (or more likely to be shopping for more than one person). As a result, I would expect spend to be higher in areas with an older customer base. Managers with an older customer base would likely select music that appeals to their customer base, likely slower music. Shoppers who do not like the manager's music taste may opt to instead shop somewhere where the music is more in line with their own tastes, so I'm not sure that the independent variable here can be properly controlled. Therefore, the study may actually be finding a correlation which depends rather on the affluence of the community, rather than what they purport to have discovered.
- matham 3y ago
  From the study: > It became imperative to develop an operational definition for the music variables slow tempo and fast tempo; that is, how slow is slow and how fast is fast? To answer this a sample was selected at random from the trading area of the supermarket. Subjects were chosen to reflect the age, sex and other relevant socioeconomic characteristics of the store's customers. Each subject was asked to listen to several instrumental musical arrangements and to classify them as slow, fast or somewhere in between. A total of 95% of the subjects classified musical selections with a tempo of 72 beats per minute or fewer as slow. Selections with a tempo of 94 beats per minute or more were classified as fast. Thus, the range from 73 to 94 beats per minute was considered between fast and slow, although this category was not directly a part of this study. Therefore, based on these findings, slow tempo music was defined as having a tempo of 72 beats per minute or fewer, an average of 60 and a standard deviation of 6. Fast tempo music was defined as having 94 beats per minute or more, an average of 108 and a standard deviation of 7. > However, perceptions of slow and fast may vary across geographic regions or demographic parameters and therefore, the reader must be cautioned against generalizing these findings too far beyond the scope of this study.

triceratops 3y ago

According to at least one store manager interviewed in Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, the employees at the store are responsible for selecting music because they're the ones who have to listen to it all day. There isn't a lot of deeper thought going into it.

bobthepanda 3y ago
it's not quite that simple, because stores play music they have licensed. And of course during the holiday season the employees are subject to a lot of songs they most likely never want to hear again, like the prolific Mariah Carey and Wham songs.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  Yeah this depends a lot on the store. I know trader Joe's employees can pick the music, but they have a reputation as being employee friendly. When I worked at a low end grocery store we had no say at all and just got whatever they sent to us. We did however sometimes hijack the PA system after hours and play whatever we wanted over that.
ambichook 3y ago
that depends entirely on which store you're talking about. the store i used to work at, for example, would simply put the radio on, while a store next door was run like this
- triceratops 3y ago
  > the store i used to work at, for example, would simply put the radio on Who selected the station?
  - ambichook 3y ago
    the owners

tetris11 3y ago

N=1, I've definitely tried to work in coffee shops during the christmas period that played the same obnoxious christmas songs on a loop to drive the customers out.

rr808 3y ago

I remember someone telling me this about McDonalds when I was a teenager. I went to a store and listened carefully, it was just local radio. Sounds like a myth.

xp84 3y ago
Radio is basically illegal to play in public due to licensing, so most chains would not want the liability. Not saying it doesn’t happen, just that that franchisee was playing chicken with a copyright infringement lawsuit.

baud147258 3y ago

> One of the local grocery stores here will play a bunch of 80s hits. I remember once where the local mall played Foule sentimentale by Alain Souchon, which has very anti consumerist lyrics... Made that grocery shopping trip quite ironic.

mock-possum 3y ago

It definitely falls into the category of “things I don’t believe work” or “things I don’t think work on me.” I’m not going to a mall to be hypnotized into sleepwalking my way from purchasing opportunity to purchasing opportunity - I’m there to get in, get the stuff I came for, and get out. No matter if they’re playing fast music, loud music, holiday music, kids music - I’m not there to listen to the music. It has no bearing on the choices I make or the actions I take. Very very hard for me to believe this stuff, it seems far too much like pseudoscientific magic to me.